So they did it – the maniacs really did it. They turned on that giant party ring and blasted some shit quite quickly while the world sat around picking their arse and pretending to do something worthwhile. I am, of course, talking about Ricky Martin coming out as a big gay gay gay.

Oh ho ho – your expectations were confounded and from thence the humour arose. No, silly, I’m on about the CERN hadro-ultra-collide-o-tron-thing, of course. I’m amazed that I’ve been able to follow the massive haddock smasher live, as it happens, in my own time. Yes, kids – I’ve finally had an epiphany about why Twitter is really bloody good. I’ve been using it a while and I do get it – a bit – but I’ve never seen any real use for the thing bar random, pointless updates and the ability to get a response out of a celebrity (which makes you feel far better than it should – thanks, David Schneider). So it’s good to finally see a real use for the thing.

This Twitter thing meant we were all able to follow the progress on what our caveman gut reaction told us would abso-defi-lutely be the end of the world as we know it. We could all talk to each other throughout the process, exclaiming in a half-joking fashion that we were about to hide under the table from whatever impending doom the super colander brought about. We were also able to form humourous tweets about what the CERN updates were saying. For example, from my chum Rich: “RT @CERN We’d like to be the first to welcome our Benefactors.” (if you don’t know Half Life, you don’t get it. Move along.)

What this all means is – aside from the huge leap for science today has (probably) taken – thanks to the modern world and the way things is be need be are be, we were able to witness something huge taking place as it happened. We were able to witness it in 140-characters or less. And we were able to take the piss out of it as and when it happened. This has happened before, but this has to be the first time a scientific event of this magnitude has been welcomed with an immediate chorus of pure, distilled comedy.